privateer

Ecclestone, a former second-hand car dealer, recognised a kindred spirit and was a kind of guardian angel at times as Jordan navigated the choppy waters of being a privateer team owner.

From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2025

His father, Jan Jansen, a Dutch privateer, was captured by one of the Moorish states in 1618.

From New York Times ● Dec. 3, 2019

It was here that the White Lion, a 160-ton English privateer ship, landed at what was then known as Point Comfort.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 14, 2019

A British privateer raids Spanish ships with his queen’s permission in 1585.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2019

There, Horace Hunley and his partners intended to operate the submarine as a privateer, helping the Confederacy break the blockade the North had placed on Southern ports.

From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler

Letters of marque regulate against abuses; privateers are paid only if they honor all the restrictions on their activities.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

In theory, pirates plunder and pillage outside the law, while corsairs were privateers regulated by authorities.

From National Geographic ● Jan. 11, 2024

The privateers were sponsored by the state, and set a ransom of 500 Guineas for Capt Lambton who was sailing The Stephenson from Bristol to Newcastle at the time.

From BBC ● May 17, 2023

As hostility between England and Spain grew, Elizabeth’s government sponsored privateers – pirates working for the English crown – led by a skillful and ruthless captain named Sir Francis Drake.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020

We passed other boats and ships of small draught, but all avoided challenge for fear of tampering with privateers.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

An 1856 treaty purported to ban privateering, but the U.S. refused to sign.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

The Protestant queen wanted colonies that would act as an ideological counterweight to Spanish Catholicism in the Americas and provide a base of operations for privateering expeditions that would raid Spanish shipping.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022

While the practice known as privateering is archaic, the idea has come up in recent decades.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 2022

By 1856, 42 nations agreed to the Declaration of Paris, which abolished privateering and formally turned pirates from accepted actors into international pariahs to be pursued by all the world’s major powers.

From Slate ● Jan. 2, 2014

In 1619, the first Africans arrived in the Virginia colony on a privateering ship.

From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone